Well the weekend is well over and I have finally finished the next part of my new direction to building a website. I hope you have been keeping up by reading my last two posts about web build process of content - layout and finally design. So I reached the design stage after a very successful start with being able to concentrate on just content which improved accessibility, search engine optimization and clean code, then the layout which helped reduced cross browser issues.

At first I thought I could jump straight into the designing, open up photoshop and get creative. But again, cause I had the freedom to concentrate on the design with out the content or layout to fill my head meant I sat back at looked at how I would actually reach the final design. I realised it required some research and inspiration firstly, go look out on the world wide web at all the wondeful examples of good and current design trends.  So I created inspiration or mood boards, something I have not done since college days. But they really help get basic concepts out and also produce more ideas in my own head.

I thought how would this be dealt with in a professional workplace and as a designer you are trying to grasp what the product is and also play to the whims of the client as well, ie favourite colours, etc. Often a client is most happy when you show you have listened to them by putting their ideas into the designs and sometimes client ideas is personal preference, but we are all human and know what we like.

So I had to be me designing for me the client. Nothing quite like dual personalities to get yourself out of the box.

I decided to take two approaches, the first being the product, ie frozendesigns.co.uk and tooked the word ‘ICE’  and then I looked at me the customer and my preferences which whilst I look round my flat is brown aspect ‘CONTEMPORARY’ (inbetween the bits of junk, books, DVDs and toys).  You can see the results below and click on the images to view larger versions.

My thoughts after this process and viewing the boards is that I am drifting towards the brown colours more than the blue, but I do feel that the ‘frozen’ aspect needs to be involved. So I am looking at a combination of the two. I want a brown and white (ish) contemporary feel to the design, use photoshop brushes combined with photomanipulations to create a current modern design feel, but bring ice like shapes into the design alongside the more floral/grunge aspect I had imagined.

Whilst catching up on articles on the web via my google reader, I found something on upcoming design trends for websites and a big impact is CSS3 and HTML 5. So before I start any actual designing I want to look at what can be achieved using these new coding abilities.  So this is where I leave you now, off to do more research and improve my front-end coding knowledge.

Read Part 4 – Base Colours

Read Part 2 – Website Layout